Quest for 116 – East Castle

Finally skied East Castle at Alta Ski Area. This was run number 112 in my quest to ski all 116 marked runs at Alta this ski season.

East Castle is big, steep run which takes a long sidestep hike to get to.  The run is not often open due to the avalanche terrain it occupies.

After a pretty strenuous sidestepping hike up, the skier is greeted with a 50 degree angle slope at the top.  Rather than sidestepping the hike, I brought my backcountry skis and skins, and skinned up.  That was a much better plan and I was dusting people that were sidestepping.

The near the top I couldn’t help notice the incredible view.  There was a strong wind coming from the opposite side of the peak and the sun was backlighting the snow as it blew off. It created a surreal photo opportunity. See below:

In this spot the sidestepping trail narrowed and the slope became more severe.  I could no longer skin at that point.  So I took the skins off and boot-packed the rest of the way.

Challenges

I was fighting a few battles, so my skiing wasn’t great and I had to rest often.  The first challenge was the hike up.  Second was the snow conditions. The snow was quite thick and chunky with patches of better powder in the shade.  The third challenge was my backcountry boots hurts my feet and make my feet go numb. I need to do some tweaking to improve that.  It’s hard to ski well with numb feet. I had to keep adjusting boot pressure and resting them.